The ‘maze’ of Braden Shattuck’s last seven years has led the Delco native to the PGA Championship at Aronimink
It will be a week of appreciation given all that Shattuck has been through since a 2019 car accident forced him to quit golf and work his way back. “It’s going to be very special," he said.
Braden Shattuck had breakfast with his wife Monday morning and then drove from Chadds Ford to Aronimink Golf Club for the first practice day of PGA Championship week.
He arrived at the course where players are supposed to park, but security at the course gave him a bit of a hard time. He didn’t have the right tag, and he wasn’t in the usual courtesy car most players will be pulling up to the Newtown Square course this week. The 31-year-old Aston native was in his pickup truck, but learned Monday it might be a little easier to take the courtesy car to avoid any confusion.
“I got over here the last couple days and it was nice and peaceful and quiet, and now it’s starting to feel like a major,” Shattuck said Monday afternoon before heading onto the course.
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Shattuck, the director of instruction at Springfield’s Rolling Green Golf Club, knows what they feel like. This is the third time since 2023 he has qualified to be on the 20-player team of PGA of America professionals that competes with the best players in the world in the PGA Championship.
He last played in 2024 at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, where he made the cut and was the low amateur.
Shattuck, a 2012 graduate of Sun Valley High, finished tied for eighth at this year’s PGA Professional Championship at Oregon’s Bandon Dunes. A third-round 80 had him on the brink of missing out on representing the region in the area’s first men’s major since Merion hosted the U.S. Open in 2013.
But a final-round 68 put him in the field this week, gave the area a native son to pull for, and gave a player who once quit golf after a 2019 car accident a good reason to coordinate logistics for family, friends, and himself.
“It’s going to be very special,” Shattuck said. “There was a lot of buildup to this tournament. I knew this was coming here for many years. As each year comes by, you get a little closer, everybody asks me, ‘Do you think you’re going to qualify?’ I think it adds a little bit of extra pressure. To get a tee time on Thursday, it’s almost like a weight off of my shoulders.”
A mindful approach
Shattuck was grinding the minitour circuit in Florida when his golf career — and his life — came to a pause in March 2019, when someone in a car ran a red light and T-boned his vehicle. Shattuck suffered two herniated discs in his back. He could barely walk, let alone play golf at a high level. He’s had countless platelet-rich plasma injections and was forced to rework his swing.
Those were the physical ailments that slowed Shattuck’s professional life. They were accompanied also by mental health struggles that had him in and out of the hospital and in the care of psychologists and psychiatrists.
“You name it, I’ve worked with them,” he said. “Having panic attacks almost daily, having chest pain daily, dealing with anxiety was by far the hardest part of [the journey], and I dealt with that for years.”
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Shattuck, who worked at Concord Country Club in West Chester and Delaware’s Bidermann Golf Club prior to Rolling Green, said going to work every day and putting a smile on his face was a challenge.
“I’m finally on the back end of that after six or seven years of it, however long ago that accident was. It was a grind, physically and mentally, that I wanted to give up on at times. Luckily I’ve had a lot of great people in my life that have pushed me past that and helped me and gotten me to where I am today and I feel like I’m in a really good space physically and mentally.”
Shattuck practices the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment approach, he said, and practices mindfulness often. Like when he folds clothes, washes dishes, or just simply practices his breathing. He uses biofeedback machines that help him keep track of his heart and respiratory rates and help him relax.
The 108th PGA Championship — one of the four major championship of men's professional golf — returns to Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square for the first time in over six decades.
On Wednesday, Marcus Hayes and Jeff Neiburg will host Gameday Central from Aronimink, and be sure to check out the PGA Championship Range Show from 12-2 p.m daily, starting Wednesday.
Whether you're going, watching from home, or just curious about what all the fuss is about, we've got you covered with our PGA guide and stories on everything from Aronimink's history and design, to what the players have to say about returning to the Philly area. We even made a golf video game so you can play the course and learn its secrets. Get more here.
All of that has translated into positive results on the course when he plays a game that constantly challenges the mind.
“My heart rate is about 140 and I’m trying to hit this putt,” he said. “I’d better step over here and take a few deep breaths and be mindful of how I’m feeling. I got so good at it from trying to help my anxiety that it actually helped me with my golf game. I could bring my heart rate from 140 to 80 in just 10 seconds.”
‘We had to drag him back inside’
Shattuck was recounting the ride Monday in the interview room at Aronimink while his dad, Scott, watched from the back of the room.
“It’s been unbelievable to see everything he’s gone through,” Scott said.
Shattuck’s parents first put a set of plastic clubs in their son’s hands when he was 3. He’d spend hours in the backyard of the family’s Aston home, running side to side after the ball.
“We had to drag him back inside,” Scott said.
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When he got older, plastic clubs turned into real clubs and real balls, and a neighbor would often come outside screaming when Shattuck’s practice shots would end up in his yard.
Shattuck, one of the area’s most decorated amateurs in recent years, won the Philadelphia PGA Junior Tour’s boys 16-to-18 player of the year in 2011 and 2012 before playing in college at the University of Delaware. He honed his skills as a youth at the Golf Course at Glen Mills and at Concord. He worked on his game with area pro Rich Steinmetz at Spring Ford Country Club.
“He would spend between 10 and 12 hours a day practicing,” Scott said.
None of that practicing came at Aronimink, a course Shattuck has played only a few times. The local guy doesn’t have a leg up on the competition other than consistently playing on bent grass and bluegrass.
It’s going to be a busy week for the family, and Scott was happy Monday afternoon to finally get his hands on his all-access pass so he can be as close to the action as possible as his son practices over the next few days and then tees it up Thursday in a major tournament in his home county.
“This is great,” Scott said. “I love it. I’m proud that he can do what he does and be able to put in the time to really make his game worthwhile. It’s fun to watch.
“Besides doing that he’s been renovating his house. My brother has been helping him do trim work. He learns how to do that. He’s just an all-around guy. He does construction work, electrical work, then goes out and teaches.”
‘Going through a maze’
How many other players in the tournament drove themselves in their own car to the course on Monday?
How many other players in the tournament will teach their regularly scheduled women’s clinic eight miles away at their day job on Wednesday? How many other players in the tournament plucked an 18-year-old caddie from their home course to be on their bag?
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Shattuck is in for a week like none other. He’s also — unlike the real touring pros at Aronimink this week — his own manager. He said he spent two hours Sunday night tracking down email addresses to get tickets into the hands of family and friends.
The logistics have included making sure to schedule time to be with his wife, Veoletta, whom Shattuck called his “rock.” Veoletta has a background in exercise science, and Shattuck said she has had a big role in helping remake a swing that has him teeing it up next to the best players in the world this week.
Monday morning’s breakfast was one of those scheduled meals. They will make sure to get a dinner together later in the week. Veoletta’s parents, Shattuck said, have never been to a golf course before, let alone a major tournament event.
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“To see their faces when they come in on Friday, I can’t wait to see how overwhelmed and shell-shocked they really are,” he said.
It will be a week of firsts, certainly, but a week full of excitement and appreciation, given all that Shattuck has been through. Navigating the last seven years, he said, has been “like I’m going through a maze trying to figure out the right answer constantly.”
The parking-lot snafu Monday at Aronimink created a new quagmire for Shattuck to untangle. With the pickup truck and the courtesy car both in the fold, how was one guy going to get two cars back home to Chadds Ford?
Shattuck left the interview tent and headed for the course. He’s figured out tougher challenges than that.
